“If it was just a button in front of you, and the button changes your body, mind, everything like that to the opposite sex, would you press it?” That was a question that F1NN5TER posed to me atTwitchConearlier this year, a question his community asked that helped him figure out he was trans.
Finn is aTwitchstreamer who rose to fame doing crossdressing streams. He started crossdressing duringMinecraftevents, cosplaying as his friends’ avatars, and that eventually bled into his streams and helped shoot him to online stardom.
At the time, he claimed he was a cis male, but in March 2024, he came out as gender-fluid and bisexual and revealed he’d been taking HRT. Finn chose to stick with he/him pronouns and forgo a name change, a move which has been divisive in the trans community.
As we grow, change, and transition, we inevitably leave parts of ourselves behind. There’s always the future to look forward to, but unfortunately, for trans people in the UK, it’s not as hopeful as it once wasdue to rising transphobiaandregressive government policies.
“When I first started streaming, [transphobia] was an America problem,” Finn remembers. “They’ve got that bathroom thing that they’re arguing about or whatever. And now, this year, it’s become a British thing.”
While transphobia has certainly been on the rise in the UK, it’s not a new phenomenon. But now, it’s worse than ever, in part due to the Americanization of British politics, although it’s been higher on the British agenda than the US for a long time because issues like religion and access to abortions aren’t as debated on this side of the pond.
Fortunately, the community Finn has built on Twitch is one he and his girlfriend Ashley feel proud of. “When I started doing TikToks, I didn’t get much negativity,” Ashley says. “Now I can get really misinformed, intense comments. But coming onto your stream and joining in and joining that community was awesome. Everyone was so lovely. [You] have a really great foundation.”
For most of Finn’s community, his coming out was as surprising as the sun rising. For years, they had called him an ‘egg’, joking that his trans self hadn’t hatched yet. His audience has been mostly supportive and many say he helped them figure out their own identity, but there’s a darker side to putting so much of your personal life on Twitch.
@big_ickyWardrobe essentials !!!#transcommunity#transtiktok#eggirl#transegg#transfem#earlytransition#transfashionadvice♬ original sound - Icky
“I attracted a lot of trans people to my streams while it was just a crossdressing thing,” Finn tells me. “I heard a lot of experiences. I was able to figure it out faster than normal. I never had anything in childhood for it, but during stream[s] it took two years or something which is pretty quick for most people to go from cis to trans.”
“We’re like, a one-two punch,” explains Ashley. After people discover Finn, “they cross the bridge fully when they find my content.” Ashley’s videos are more focused, informative pieces that give advice to trans people on how to dress, voice train, and tackle obstacles that so many gender non-comforming people are often confronted with.
It’s easy to see why people questioning their gender find comfort in the duo, as they both encourage experimentation. “‘Clothing has no gender’ is a great thing to have in mind when you’re trying outfits,” Finn explains. “Every time you see a runway, it’s all very androgynous, isn’t it? [The] most fashionable people, f*cking around with gender.”
One way Finn plays with his own gender is by keeping all his estrogen in an old military ammo box that he’s plastered with cutesy stickers he buys at Artist Alley.
Unfortunately, with fame and adoration come parasocial pitfalls that both Finn and Ashley have experienced. People insert themselves into the relationship and often blow seemingly small issues out of proportion.
“Being on stream is a bit of a character, so it’s always dialed up,” Ashley explains. “Sometimes if you do something to be funny, somebody can be like, ‘oh you’re being mean to your partner, taking it too far.’”
However, the pair leaned into this at first. “We did a couple of streams together before we started dating and there was a ‘will-they-won’t-they’ thing to it, just like a TV show,” Finn tells me.
F1nn and Ashley and Mods, OH MY!!
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Finn spent years building himself into this character, the crossdressing e-girl who often went by the name Rose. He took a break after feeling like his life was being controlled too much by chat, always wondering when he’d fulfill his end of the bargain for donation goals. When people see you as a character, they get attached to the narrative and fandom can creep into obsession.
There was one incident where Finn’s community pressured him into doing a “donation voice,” which is a feminine voice he would put on when receiving large donations. Finn was doing vocal training withSeattle Voice Labsand was a self-proclaimed “terrible student.” For a $250 donation, he’d do the voice, but “as I sort of began taking it more seriously, doing it became harder,” he explains. “I guess it became more real.” Finn made a career out of his streamer persona, as many do, but it seems that as he began understanding his own identity more, it became harder to distance himself from the character.
It doesn’t help that even Twitch got Finn and the character mixed up. Before he came out,he got banned for adjusting his bra. The reason given was “prolonged touching of female presenting breasts.”
“It’s really ambiguous because at some point, someone has to draw the line on what is female presenting and what isn’t,” Finn says. “If you leave it up to streamers, especially ones that do OF, they’ll try and push the boundaries.”
Ashley said the ban was a point of pride for Finn, and I asked him if he felt any gender euphoria because of it. “It was just genuine pride,” he tells me. “Gender euphoria would be a good one for it too, just because I’d adjusted my bra before and at some point down the line it became female presenting.”
While it’s nice to laugh about it now, it does raise questions about how corporations make these kinds of decisions. “I really did grill [my manager Harry]. I was like, ‘Oh, if I wear too much makeup, is that female presenting?’ What you identify as isn’t necessarily what people are going to perceive you as. When it’s a private corporation’s platform, it’s up to the private corporation.”
Perhaps surprisingly, one area of Finn’s professional life that hasn’t seemed to cause any trouble within his community is him producing content for popular subscription site OF. It is another example of tech censorship, however. He calls it the Battle Pass, a nod to his gamer roots and because “you’ve gotta get around Twitch rules,” he explains.
In aprior article on Amouranth, TheGamer ended up in trouble with Google for repeated use of the adult site’s name, so we are using the initials here.
Starting an OF wasn’t a rash decision Finn just jumped into without thought; he did his research before starting, and a lot of his community had been asking for it. Finn is now in the top 0.01 percent on the site, “the number doesn’t go lower than that,” he says. He got there within the first week.
The transition from Twitch streamer to OF star has also added to the criticisms some have of Finn. Before he came out, he was accused of exploiting peoples’ fetishisation of trans women due to the teasing and flirtatious nature of his crossdressing material. Unfortunately, Twitch vetoed my question on this topic, so I was unable to get Finn’s perspective.
Due to the monetary and parasocial relationship between streamers and their audience, it’s easy to see why some people would take issue with someone essentially selling their gender experimentation. It’s also important to note that Finn has donated $50,000 to GenderGP, a private clinic in the UK, to help people transition, and many people find his community to be a valuable place.
Finn has come a long way since his start as a Minecraft creator. I asked him if he’d ever go back to it. “No, I do OF now,” Finn says decisively. “It’s not like I don’t have time, it’s just that… if you stream stuff like that, you tend to get fans of the game watching it, right? And so, if I attract some younger audience, then I can’t talk as openly about what I’m doing. Where you have people that are more into adult content, they might watch me for that. It’s not a community I want meshing.”
Gender and sexuality are fluid, messy things, hard to navigate at the best of times. Coming out for any queer person is never easy, and exploring your gender on a private company’s platform while still having to perform a character for your audience comes with its own unique hurdles.
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